REVIEW: Salem's Lot

    I'll forgive you if you forgot this movie was coming. After shelving this project some two years ago, Warner Bros. has remained awfully mum about when we could expect to see Salem's Lot, only to decide to drop it on MAX with little more than two weeks of preparation, a bewildering practice that perhaps says more about the state of Hollywood at present than the content of the film itself. But that's not the ravenous evil that we're here to discuss today.

 

   In Gary Dauberman's adaptation of the famous Stephen King book, author Benjamin Mears returns to his childhood home of Jerusalem's Lot, or "Salem's Lot" to the locals, imagining that it might help spark an idea for a new book. How was he supposed to know that his hometown chose this of all days to start playing host to an ancient evil, one bent on spreading its illness into every home? Overnight, Salem's Lot is in the grip of darkness, and only Ben and a paltry group of makeshift vampire hunters can hope to contain it. 

    Everyone in the cast showed up to bat. Lewis Pullman plays the lead, Benjamin Mears, the sheepish author who always looks like he’s choking on an apology yet sprints full force once the undead start climbing out the walls. Meanwhile, Makenzie Leigh has just the right amount of spark as love interest Susan Norton. Alfre Woodward admittedly looks a little lost in her initial scenes as the skeptical Dr. Cody (did that somehow actually reinforce the part?), but she seems surprisingly at home once the fangs come out and the crosses start glowing.

    Woefully underused yet somehow pivotal to the specific game Dauberman is playing is Pilou Asbæk as the sinister Mr. Straker. His character seems like he wandered in from a catchpenny carnival, which makes him seem out of place in 1970s Maine, but his countenance is so uncompromising, the illusion so sustaining, you get the idea that he knows something you don’t, and that makes you feel embarrassed, even vulnerable. Indeed, the evil which funnels into town through him could never have been anticipated from this side of post-modernism.

    The movie favors a tone that borders on operatic. It’s the kind of film that plays with basements and doctors as though they were dungeons and apothecaries. And whoever said horror had to be drab? This movie gives us lots of mythological iconography, lots of saturated colors. This literal golden glow makes everything seem precious, like the fading glow of a candle, or a forgotten town of fifty years ago about to be engulfed in eternal undead night. 

    And yet there is also something very contemporary about this film, like the way it chooses to adapt the book like an action film as much as a horror movie. Late in the story, as an example, Mark finds a very creative way to try eliminating an entire hoard of vampires all at once, a method that feels like it came from the mind of a kid who watches a lot of comic book movies, but who can argue with the results? A lot of films lose their balance trying to keep one foot in the past and one in the present, but the admixture helps the movie find its unique flavor. 

    Fans of the book will be delighted to know that the film manages to fit in most of the major set pieces from King's novel. The things that happen in the book don't just make the cut, they happen in a way that could only read well on film. King's writing is very psychological, placing readers in the thought processes of someone who can't shake the feeling that the body in the casket is staring at you with its beady eyes wide open, but that kind of internal process doesn't convert well cinematically. This is an adaptation that knows when not to translate something literally and find the best way to play something with only sight and sound. 

    And yet, there's a middle forty-minutes where all the vampiring and staking just starts to feel like a laundry list, the movie eating through its pre-invasion exercises as quick as it can so it can get to the really good stuff. I don’t know who it was that demanded that the movie be less than two hours, but they weren’t doing anyone any favors. The loss isn't felt in the absence in any particular scenes or characters, but rather in the breathing room. That vital interstitial time when the terror gets to settle before the roller coaster makes the next loop. We didn’t need the three-hour burn of the ’79 or ’04 miniseries, but we needed more than an hour and forty-five minutes. 

    Still, when you tally it all, Dauberman's film lands as the best adaptation of King's book to date (an adaptation that absolutely should have gone to theaters first!) We can only speculate why New Line Cinema sat on this movie for two years after its initial release window.

    I don't know. Maybe it took them this long to get the rights from the Gordon Lightfoot estate for "Sundown."

            --The Professor